Thursday, February 11, 2010

Damn you, Whiteline!

Sway Bar installations are one of the easiest and quickest modifications to do on any Subaru - So why did it take me longer to "attempt" to install one than the entire rear end? Oh let me tell you.

Start off with breaking the rear bolt on the drivers side sway bar bracket. Ok, whatever, I'll have to drill it out... So I throw a ton of PB Baster on the others and wait a bit. During this time the snow off Jamie's car is melting into a pool of water right under the back end of the Track Car... Grreaattt...

Move to the passenger side, break that one too - Damn it. Go get the drill, center punch, some bits and a tap. Start to go to town on the bolts - All but one of the bits I brought with me - Dull as a rock. Get more, finally drill them out and the corrosion is so bad the bolts are totally frozen in the frame. So I grab the tap and cut new threads hoping to clean up the existing ones. That works wonders.

Bolt the new brackets up and then I go and grab the sway bar. Now for all those who are already saying "well Mike, an STI bar doesn't fit an RS" - Ya, I know. But the lateral links I'm using are from an STI to move the track out and I've fit up STI bars in that way before on a few swaps. Only problem is that Whiteline must of revised their bar - they only have a small (2 inch) section of strait pipe where the bushing fits. Since the RS is a bit more narrow than the STI, it wont mount to the brackets properly, ug.

The solution here is to check on a few other brands of bars, I know I've used a Cusco in the past so maybe I'll try to source one of those. I guess I should've known things were moving along too smoothly, haha.